Wednesday, October 26, 2011

dear readers, this is 2e. 2e is currently our guest, while her peeps visit new zealand, a place that is a long way away. because it is so far away they will be gone for 3 weeks. 2e is a friend of mine and young dave's from the farm where the magnificent bonzo lives. as you will see from the photograph she is very small. i have concluded that 2e is actually her size rather than her name, and that small dogs such as this are measured by placing them in a bra and seeing which cup-size will most effectively contain them.

2e's small size does not prevent her from moving extremely fast. she is one of the few dogs who can keep up with young dave, a feat which involves her little legs going at double the speed of light. i have rather a soft spot for her as she bears quite a resemblance to young dave when he was a pup. she has a similar habit of hanging on an old chap's beard, which is endearing, although rather eye-watering.

before 2e came to stay mrs 2e came round to have a look at the accommodation.

"she can be a bit of an escape artist," she said. herself assured her that our garden was dave-proofed when young dave was smaller than 2e and that she would have a job finding any gaps.

this might have been the case, had 2e not had the back legs of a frog. she is able to jump up to face height. in addition she has the climbing skills of a cat. on day 1 of her visit there was a knock at the front door. my boy answered. it was mr next door.

"have you lost a dog?" he enquired. my boy did a quick head count and saw that our guest was nowhere to be seen. he went round with mr next door and confirmed that the small dog performing the wall of death with young ruby in their living room was in fact supposed to be in our living room. my boy is difficult to surprise, having lived for his entire life with the peeps, but he was at a loss as to how 2e had managed to gain access to next door. 2e kindly demonstrated her route by trying to repeat the exercise, which involved climbing onto the veg patch and through a tiny gap in the trellis that runs along the top of the dividing wall. it was decided that the trellis would be re-enforced for the duration of her visit.

on day 2, herself was spending a happy half hour moving soil around in the garden when there was a knock on the door. it was a neighbour from two doors up in the other direction. this neighbour owns the house where until recently there were two small dogs. there is now one large dog, of a breed known as a rotten-wailer. this fellow is large, black and brown, and pretty scary. the neighbour informed herself that 2e had made an appearance in her garden.

herself went round and followed the neighbour into her garden. sure enough, there was 2e sitting looking thoroughly pleased with herself (that is, with 2e's self, not herself's self. glad that's clear.) the rotten-wailer went up to her to have a sniff. this triggered a ferocious response from 2e which by all accounts was entirely disproportionate to her size and showed very poor judgement in terms of self-preservation. luckily this particular rotten-wailer still has his tail and his owner grabbed hold of it and hung on while herself whisked 2e up into the air and had a firm word with her on the subject of manners. further fortifications were added to the garden perimeter and so far seem to have been effective, although the peeps are now rather more watchful of our small guest's movements.

as well as being an accomplished escape artist, 2e is rather adept at interfering with himself's use of his laptop. the laptop is known as the square pet, and is loathed by young dave on account of its unattractive habit of hogging himself's lap when young dave would rather be there. he sits and glares at it and has, with an intellectual skill he does not normally demonstrate, learned which set of key strokes precede it being closed down. when himself presses the escape key to close down his game, young dave shuffles into position and the minute the square pet is removed young dave takes its place on himself's lap, throwing himself on his back for a tickle.

with a little encouragement from young dave, 2e has developed a method of inveigling herself into the gap where himself places the mouse, next to him on the sofa. she then sits on top of the mouse hand. it is still possible to operate a mouse with a small dog on the back of your hand, but it does make it extremely difficult for himself in the fine motor skills department.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

dear readers, it has been ages since i wrote, for which i can only apologise. as you will know, herself has not been herself lately. she has been off work since january with the collie-wobbles. this takes the form of an allergy to a number of things, including supermarkets, crowds, people standing too close behind her, people shouting, people looking angry, or in fact just being people. as you might imagine this has had a rather debilitating effect on her, and indeed on the whole household.

the only way she can cope with a supermarket is with a minder. my boy has proved to be particularly good in this role. he has years of experience of supermarket fear. when this was at its worst herself came up with a strategy for getting the shopping done, without having to leave my boy at home, where he might have got up to untold mischief. as my boy was already conditioned to the smell of lavender being relaxing, all herself needed to do was find something in the supermarket that smelled of lavender and my boy would calm down. so she and my boy would enter the supermarket, dash to where the bubble baths were displayed, and heave the top off a lavender one, whereupon my boy would inhale deeply and calm down. my boy tried to persuade herself to try this but as the peeps now shop at lidl, which tends to have an unusual approach to layout and a rather random selection of products in the personal hygiene field it was not a success. they had had to content themselves with shopping at the speed of light in order to get out of the shop before dizziness and queasiness make it untenable.

there does not appear to be much likelihood of herself returning to the legal world and she therefore was referred to a person called an occupational elf in order to be assessed for retirement. the elf said she was not mad enough to retire. a second elf was asked to give a view and came to the same conclusion. however, herself cannot do her job and so she is likely to be dismissed. call me old-fashioned but i can't help thinking there is something illogical about all this. it does give us more time with her and the magnificent bonzo is getting ridden pretty much every day so every cloud has a silver lining.

i am hoping now i have persuaded her to get back at the keyboard i might be able to keep in touch rather more effectively than i have been doing. i hope you are all well and keeping your peckers up. (for the benefit of my reader in canada 'keep your pecker up' is not as rude as it sounds).

who's who

joker the lurcher = the authorherself = the author's p.a.himself = herself's other halfthe peeps = himself + herselfjoker's boy = the wild offspring of the peepsyoung dave = joker's apprenticeher maamship = friend of the peepsthe prof = her maamship's other halfthe extreme programmer = offspring 1 of the prof and her maamshipgirl in a trench = offspring 2 of the prof and her maamshipthe gypsy = childhood friend of herselfthe diy god = the gypsy's other halfthe captain = pilot friend of the peepsmrs captain = other half of the captainlupin = an old sparring partner of the authormrs lupin = lupin's humanfear = youngest offspring of mrs lupinthe snake-charmers = friends from round the corner - mr snake-charmer works with himselfthe pirates = mrs pirate works with himself and teaches my boy art, the young pirate is a genius with wordsmrs collie = bonzo's former landladyuncle gary = bonzo's landlord